Nerd Watching

MYFATHERCAMEINTOTHISWORLD A FULLY formed engineer, born with a slide rule in one hand and a tape measure in the other. Bluntly put, he is a nerd.

Until recently, Dad wore the nerd uniform: horn-rimmed glasses and short-sleeved dress shirts in white or off-white. Lately, however—perhaps afraid that he was becoming a parody of nerdiness—he’s branched out to wire-rimmed glasses and subtle plaid shirts. But for this vintage nerd, function always trumps fashion. He cuts his own hair—and it looks like it. Much to my stylish mother’s mortification, he still uses the Naugahyde suitcase he received when he graduated from high school in 1945, even though the clasps broke back in the seventies; he’d been roping it shut until a year ago, when he retrofitted it with a couple of old belt buckles. He doesn’t sport a pocket protector in his shirt pocket; instead, he uses an old eyeglass case he’s customized for the same purpose.

He’d rather tinker than breathe. Take the insulated plastic mug someone gave him last Christmas. The design bothered him, so he stuck the mug on the lathe at work and machined the handle off and modified the rim so it fit his lower lip better. Always mindful that something in this poorly engineered world might require a little adjustment, this man keeps four rolls of duct tape in his pickup. Still, the benefits of having a nerd for a father far outweigh the social drawbacks. While other kindergartners took birds’ nests to show-and-tell, I wowed my classmates with a Dynatrol, a device my dad invented that measures the viscosity and density of fluids from ketchup to gasoline via a vibrating paddle. And when at age six I proved too uncoordinated to ride a bike, he built me the coolest electric car.

My father, now 74 years old, still commutes 120 miles round-trip from his home outside Brenham to the Houston-based business he and his partner started in the fifties. (He loves the drive because “there’s trouble waiting on